French police launched a wide-range investigation on Tuesday after a twenty three-year-old Jewish man was kidnapped and murdered.
Jewish community security services have said they suspect the crime may have been motivated by anti-Semitism.
Ilan Halimi was found critically wounded, naked and hand-cuffed along a railway track in the suburb of Saint Genevieve des Bois, 30 kilometres south of Paris on Monday, three weeks after he was kidnapped by a gang in Paris.
The victim, who was burnt and cut on 80 percent of his body, died of his wounds as he was taken to hospital.
Series of crimes
Judiciary Police Chief Francois Jaspar and general attorney of Paris Jean-Claude Marin said that at least three other similar criminal kidnapping attempts have been reported since last December, but that previous ones have failed.
In each case, one of three young women, a blond, a brunette and an Arab woman, or a young man would attract the victim on a date, during which the victim would be attacked by the rest of the gang. Ilan Halimi was the only victim who was caught by the gang.
Jaspar and Marin did not mention the victim’s Jewish identity or any anti-Semitic aspect in this affair but community security services suspect the kidnappers who tortured the young man may have had anti-Semitic motives.
Anti-Semitism suspected
The French Anti-Semitism Vigilance Bureau (BVCA) has asked the police to investigate and determine whether there is or not an anti-Semitic background to this affair and more specifically whether the gang is targeting Jews.
Sammy Ghozlan, the Bureau’s head, told EJP only one of the four targeted persons was not Jewish.
According to the AFP and Jewish community services, the victim, a cellular phone salesman was attracted by a young Arab woman who came to his place of work, on Voltaire boulevard, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, on January 17.
Ilan Halimi was kidnapped on the night of January 21, when he was to meet the young woman.
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Identikit of one of the women used by the gang to attract their prey
Photo: French Police |
After the kidnapping, the gang contacted Ilan’s family and demanded a ransom of 450,000 euros.
Realising the victim’s family was unable to gather such a sum of money, the gang reduced the ransom to 50,000 euros and threatened to kill the young man.
The kidnappers sent a photo of Ilan via the internet with death threats but failed to arrive at several meetings to collect the ransom from the young man’s relatives. The last phone call with the gang was on Thursday.
"We fear that the fact that Ilan was Jewish aggravated his case and caused his abductors to behave as Islamists. Why did the kidnappers, once they discovered that Ilan’s family was not wealthy, as they had thought, not let him go and instead tortured him to death?" asked Sammy Ghozlan.
In a statement, the Anti-Semitism Vigilance Bureau said it "shares the deep emotion of the Jewish community of Paris and in particular of the residents of the 11th district."
Ilan Halimi will be buried Friday at the cemetery of Pantin, in the suburbs of Paris.